Don't discount the value of screen space that's normally out in the nearer part of your peripheral vision, though. It's not as valuable as screenage that's norm

Don't discount the value of screen space that's normally out in the nearer part of your peripheral vision, though. It's not as valuable as screenage that's normally in the centre of your vision, but it's still very useful (assuming it isn't too distorted by the viewing angle). You may have to move your eyes and maybe even slightly move your head to see what's out there clearly, but (I strongly assume - I'm not an expert) that kind of glancing should still be a lot more (yuck) "spatial" and less distracting than having to alt-tab or whatever to reveal the same information and then to hide it again. So in concrete terms, a 40" 16:9 4K monitor like http://www.tomshardware.com/news/philips-4k-bdm4065uc-monitor,27977.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/philips-4k-bdm4065uc-monito... which has slightly greater vertical height than the 26.5" 1:1 1920×1920 screen as well as higher ppi ought to be preferable if price, horizontal desk space or whatever don't rule it out. Unfortunately, OSes and other software tend to mess this up: in particular, the fact that those handy fullscreen commands actually fill the screen with the selected window or picture or video or whatever is no longer good news if some or all of the edges of your screen are far enough away from the comfortable centre area of your vision (see http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-large-display-paradox/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-large-display-paradox/ ). This was appropriate behaviour in the past, when both pixels and screen inches were limited and expensive and so it was safe to assume that the whole of the screen was well within the user's central viewing area—and in fact was probably covering much less of that central area than was at all ideal. Nowadays the user should be able to define a central fullscreen area that (possibly) doesn't take up the whole screen: then (by default etc.) fullscreened items should be expanded to the limits of the "fullscreen" area and no more. The rest of the screen can be filled with other information: maybe the other open windows pushed to the side in an OS X Exposé-like manner, or things like image metadata for a viewed image. The brightness of the outer area should be subdued to prevent it from distracting from the central image. (A practical use for whizzy translucency effects!). The information out in the "gutter" will be glanceable, but won't feel like it's impinging on your view of the fullscreened item (if it does, you didn't make the fullscreen area large enough).